El Salvador’s Bukele claims election win before official results announced
Bukele had been expected to secure second term amid soaring approval ratings and virtually no competition
Published 5th, Feb 2024
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has declared himself the winner of national elections that revolved around the tradeoff between security and democracy.
Bukele on Sunday claimed to have won more than 85 percent of the vote despite electoral authorities not releasing the official results of the poll.
“According to our numbers, we have won the presidential election with more than 85 percent of the votes and a minimum of 58 of 60 deputies in the Assembly,” Bukele said on X before official results were announced, describing the outcome as a “record in the entire democratic history of the world”.
Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena congratulated Bukele, although the official results had not been announced.
China’s Embassy in the capital San Salvador also congratulated Bukele and his party for the “historic victory”.
With soaring approval ratings and virtually no competition, gang-busting Bukele had been widely expected to comfortably secure a second term.
For the first time since civil war ended in 1992, the Central American country held the election under a state of emergency imposed for Bukele’s crackdown on criminal gangs, which slashed homicide rates but drew criticism for human rights violations.
Reporting from the capital, San Salvador, Al Jazeera’s Manuel Rapalo said that most people hoped a victory for Bukele would mean the country would be able to build on the successes of a reduction in crime, doing away with gang violence and tackling other serious problems such as poverty.
“It’s not so much about who is going to win but rather how the country is going to move forward beyond gains it has made in crime reduction,” Rapalo said.
With little need to campaign for himself, Bukele focused on promoting his Nuevas Ideas party, which holds 56 seats in the 84-member assembly.
The overall number of seats has been reduced to 60 under a reform he led, which critics say will make it much harder for smaller parties to get enough votes to get in.
In 2022, the legislature also approved a law allowing Salvadorans to vote abroad. Under that reform, all foreign ballots – which tend to favour Bukele – will count towards the department of San Salvador, which has the most undecided seats, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, an NGO promoting human rights.
Alternating in power for some three decades, the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) were discredited for corruption and inefficacy. Their presidential candidates have been polling in the low single digits.
‘Fragile’ economy key concern
Bukele, who often spars with foreign leaders and foes on social media, came to power in 2019, trouncing El Salvador’s traditional parties with a promise to eliminate gang violence and rejuvenate the stagnant economy.
He has campaigned on the success of his draconian security strategy, which saw authorities suspend civil liberties to arrest thousands of suspected gang members without charge. The detentions led to a collapse in nationwide murder rates and transformed the poor Central American nation that was once among the world’s most dangerous.
Advertisement
“I would vote for Bukele because of the work he has done so far,” Juan Carlos Rosales, 44, a systems engineer in the capital San Salvador, told the Reuters news agency. “The improvement in security is palpable.”
Still, despite Bukele’s solid base, some analysts question how long voters will back his strongman approach, particularly as more people feel its sting.
Under his rule, El Salvador has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, with an estimated 2 percent of its adult population behind bars.
Advertisement
Bukele has credited his “mano dura” or “iron fist” tactics for causing that number to tumble to just 7.8 homicides out of every 100,000 people – the lowest in Central America.
Rights groups have warned El Salvador’s democracy is under attack.
Bukele has largely dismissed those concerns, at one point changing his profile on X to say: “World’s coolest dictator”.
His biggest challenge is the state of the economy, Central America’s slowest-growing during his time in power. More than a quarter of Salvadorans live in poverty.
The International Monetary Fund, which is negotiating a $1.3bn bailout with El Salvador, in late 2023 described the country’s fiscal situation as “fragile”.
In a post on X this week, Bukele pledged to bring about changes. “There is still a huge amount to do,” he said, “but, step by step, we will resolve entire decades of looting and neglect”.
